"Dave Duncan - The Seventh Sword - 2 - The Coming Of Wisdom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Dave)

She splashed along the trail, around the pond to the group. Rain soaked her hair
and dribbled into her collar. Silence fell at her approach. She was the local
expert on swordsmen.
Why would swordsmen be coming here?
Several voices started to speak, but Salimono's drowned them out. "Is it safe,
priestess?"
"It isn't safe to hide the women!" Quili said firmly. Kandoru had told stories
about deserted villages being burned. "You'd provoke them. No, it's the men!"
"But they didn't do it!" a woman wailed.
"It wasn't us!" said others. "You know that!"
4 THE COMING OF WISDOM
"Hush!" she said, and they hushed. They were all older than she, even Nia, and
yet they hushed. They were alt bigger than sheтАФhusky, raw peasant folk, gentle
and bewildered and indistinct in the gloom. "SaTo, did you send a message to her
ladyship'1"
"PiPowent."
"I think maybe all the men should go..."
There was another terrified chorus of "We didn't do it!"
"Quiet! I know that. I'll testify to that. But I don't think it was reported."
There was a silence. Then Myi's voice growled, "How could it be reported?"
There had been no swordsmen left to report it to.
Would that matter? Quili did not know.
When an assassination went unreported, was it all the witnesses who were equally
guilty, or was there some other, even more horrible formula? Either way, she was
sure that the men were in danger. Swordsmen rarely killed women.
"I'll go and greet them. They won't hurt me." Quili spoke with as much
confidence as she could manage. The priesthood was sacrosanct, wasn't it? "But I
mink you men should all go off wood 'cutting or something until we know why
they've come. Women get food ready. They'll want breakfast. They may go straight


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on to the manor, but well try to keep them here as long as we can, if there
aren't too many... How many of them are there, Sal'o?"
"Don't know."
"Mfell, go and tell Adept Motipodi. Wood cutting, or land clearing up on the
hill until we find out what they want. Arrange signals. Now, off you go!"
All the men ran. Quili huddled her cloak about her. "Myi? Prepare some food.
Meat, if you can find any. And beer."
"What if they ask where the men are?"
'Tell lies," Quili said. This was a priestess speaking?
"What if they want us to... to go to bed?" That was Nia, and her man Hantula was
almost as old as Kandoru had been.
Quili laughed, surprising herself. She was having nightmares of bodies and blood
all over the ground, and Nia was
DAVE DUNCAN 5
dreaming of a tussle with some handsome young swordsman. "Do it, if you want to!
Enjoy yourself!"